We don’t want to change a lot: Suryakumar Yadav | Cricket News
CUTTACK: Not having a great time with the bat, Suryakumar Yadav stressed on the importance of playing domestic cricket whenever possible to be match ready. India’s T20 skipper has failed to score a half-century in his last 20 innings and five SMAT matches recently, where he scored only 165 runs in five games, and his strike rate has plummeted to below 130 from close to 190 back in 2022.Go Beyond The Boundary with our YouTube channel. SUBSCRIBE NOW!“You should never forget your roots. Whenever there is no international cricket, all the players go and play domestic cricket. It is a good challenge there, because when you come here, it becomes easy for you because you work very hard there. If you look at the players who went there, for example, Abhishek (Sharma) and a lot of players among us went to play Mushtaq Ali. You always stay in touch, you get to learn a lot from that,” Yadav said.On preparation for the T20 World Cup early next year, he added in jest, “Our 2026 T20 World Cup preparation began right after we won the T20 World Cup in 2024. Because for any big tournament, you cannot start preparing when the tournament is nearby. It’s like when we appear for exams in school, it is not like we try to study everything in the last four days. We study for a year or two. Our preparation is similar.”
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“I feel, in the last 5-6 series which we have played, we have tried and played with a similar combination. We have not changed too much. We don’t want to change a lot going into the next two series also.”Key players Shubman Gill and Hardik Pandya’s comebacks will still force some changes in the side, and Yadav is happy with the problem of plenty. “What you saw in Asia Cup also, when Pandya was bowling the new ball, he opened a lot of options, lot of combinations for us with respect to playing XI. That’s what he brings to the table. His experience, the way he has done really well in all the matches, all bigger games in ICC events, all ACC events. I think that experience will count a lot. His presence will definitely give a good balance to the side,” said Yadav.Yadav pointed out the need for T20 batters to be flexible with their batting positions. “Other than openers, everyone has to be very flexible in T20Is. The thing is all the batters from No. 3 to 7 are capable of batting at any position. For example, you might see Tilak Verma batting at No. 6 some day. You might see Dubey as you saw in Australia. Dubey went in to bat at No. 3. So, it depends what the entry point is of a batter. So, we have to be flexible.”
